Progressive Historiography of the American War for Independence

By Mike Crane

1 Introduction

This paper will focus on progressive historians of the American war for independence. The wording of
the title foreshadows my conclusions, but please bear with me nonetheless; for I had to call this paper
something...

Another word of introduction: this paper is written with a specific focus. That is, one must decide the
meaning of "progressive historiography." It can mean either the history written by "progressive
historians," or it can mean history written by historians of the Progressive era of American history and
shortly after. I have chosen a focus more in keeping with the latter interpretation, if for no other reason
than it provides a useful compare-and-contrast "control" literature. Moreover, it allows me to duck the
knotty problem of defining exactly what a "progressive historian" is. (Unless, of course, one is
satisfied with the explanation that the term is merely a handle by which to grasp a group of historians,
and little else.)

The last caveat is this: the focus of this essay is on the predominant question of the historiographical
period: was the war a revolution or a war for independence? One could choose many other questions
to argue, questions that historians have for years disputed about the revolution, but there are a number
of reasons why I have chosen this particular one; the two best follow. First, it is an old and time-
honored question that professors and instructors have posed to their students for years; of pre-Civil
War historiographical questions, it is perhaps second only in fashion during the last twenty to twenty-
five years to the Jefferson-Hemmings paternity controversy. Second, the revolution-or-independence
question is one of those which must be answered through interpretation. A case cannot be made that is
so utterly conclusive as to exclude all others; it is that very fact that makes history at once so
frustrating and so fascinating. What better way could there be to look at the writings of a specific
school of historians?
And so, in the pursuit of "personal truth," I proceed...

2 Frederick Jackson Turner

Perhaps the most famous of all progressive historians is Frederick Jackson Turner. His most famous
argument is not devoted strictly to the American Revolution, but instead to the effects of the American
frontier. In a sentence, his argument is that the frontier was the chief determinant in American history.

This is not to say that Turner did not write about the war; he did. Even in his seminal work, The
Frontier in American History, there are discussions of the frontier''s effect on the coming of the
revolution. It is worth noting, before exploring Turner's arguments, that the frontier in this period was
only about one hundred miles from the Atlantic coast. Of course, as the period under scrutiny
approaches the war chronologically, the frontier moves away from the ocean. But it is important to
remember that Turner defines the Jamestown of Captain John Smith in 1607 as the frontier in its initial
stage. So, in this context, it makes sense to the almost-twenty-first-century reader when Turner refers
to the frontier as defined by the Proclamation of 1763 as the "Old West."

Turner gives an idea of his world-view near the end of the book:

The transformations through which the United States is passing in our own day are so profound, so
far-reaching, that it is hardly an exaggeration to say that we are witnessing the birth of a new nation in
America. The revolution in social and economic structure of this country during the past two decades
is comparable to what occurred when independence was declared and the constitution was formed, or

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to the changes wrought by the era which began half a century ago, the era of Civil War and
Reconstruction (Turner1920, 311).
This point bears further examination in the context of all the historians being compared in this paper,
but in a later section. It is more important at this point to continue with the discussion of Turner's
examination of the war as it relates to his frontier thesis.

Briefly, Turner argues five points specific to the war in his overall treatment of the frontier. First, a
fighting frontier had been established from Georgia to New England as a result of the colonial wars
with the French. Second, a primitively agricultural and democratically self-sufficient society had been
established on the frontier that was profoundly and fundamentally different from the society from
which the frontiersmen''s progenitors had sprung; it is of course because those progenitors were
different from their fellows that they came across the ocean in the first place. Third, the frontier
developed home markets for the growing—--though still small—--colonial industrial base, lessening
the importance of the triangular trade. Fourth, non-English settlers had caused an unintended and at
first informal breach with the mother country that later fueled separatist sentiment; it is no great thing
in the thick of rebellion to forget that the war was at first a war for the rights of Englishmen when one
is not an Englishman in the first place. Fifth, the frontier by its very nature reflected a contest between
the privileged and the non-privileged; Turner maintains that this dichotomy was more in evidence
outside New England and was more of a democratic revolution outside that region than inside (Turner
1920, 106-111).

Of course, one is tempted to minimize, or even belittle this last observation by pointing out that the
New Englanders provided the bulk of the troops for the rebel army...

3 Turner and the Significance of Sections

In any case, Turner's arguments foreshadow those of another historian, J. Franklin Jameson. Both
argue a geographical or quasi-geographical determinism. Both argue that the war was a revolution that
resulted in greater democracy, though their definitions of democracy are rather broad, to include—--
especially—--economic considerations. Before turning to Jameson, however, I would like to mention
another work by Turner, entitled The Significance of Sections in American History, which was
published in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression.

This book is not exclusively about the American Revolution. Instead, it discusses several important
factors in American history from a demographic perspective. Turner echoes his own frontier thesis in
this work, citing instances in the West that shaped the character of the Revolution. The behavior of the
earliest pioneers was important in understanding the later evolution of the country, he argued, and
focused on the North Carolina frontiersmen. He concluded that the Association desired "not to be
arded as a ''lawless mob,'' and their petition for annexation to North Carolina" led to a regularization of
the political status of the frontier districts (Turner 1932, 97). This pattern would be repeated again and
again in the decades after the war, but Turner's point is that the frontier districts were just as important
to the political and social nature of the struggle as were the established eastern districts and towns
which have received so much more "press" in the literature.

Another factor of consequence in Turner's view was early sectionalism (indeed, that is the focus of this
particular book, much more so than the American war for independence). "The West," which in the
middle nineteenth century meant such lands as Iowa and Indiana, instead meant in pre-revolutionary
years the western regions of the existing colonies. Turner specifically discussed the western regions of
Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. He suggested that the geography of the region—--rocky and
mountainous, in distinct contrast to the alluvial plains of the tidewater region—--made for an order
much more like New England society than the planter-led society of Virginia and the rest of the South.
He contended that the frontier communities were more democratic. An informed reader can today
easily infer that Turner was writing not just of the revolution, but of the beginnings of the sectional

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competition that culminated in the American Civil War (Turner 1932, 293). But it is the geographical
determinism that Turner advances that is of the most interest to me; one sees the same sort of
argument again and again while reading the works of Turner and his fellows in the progressive school.

4 J. Franklin Jameson

J. Franklin Jameson wrote a landmark work in 1926. More accurately, it was a collection of four
lectures that were subsequently collected into a hundred-page book. His basic premise was that the
war was a social revolution. He made four main arguments (coincidental with the four lectures), which
follow.

First, Jameson argued that the status of persons was changed. He maintained that slavery was ended in
a significant region by the war, and that abolitionism became fashionable and real as a political force.
In order to contest this conclusion, it is a simple thing to counter-argue that since Massachusetts had
but five slaves in 1776, it seems that slavery was definitely on its way out before the war even began
in earnest. And it would also be obvious to point out that abolitionism was certainly not new to
England and her colonies before and during the war; the younger Pitt was a moderate abolitionist, as
were other members of Parliament. In short, the arguments regarding the status of people and how that
status changed as a result of the war really do not hold up under scrutiny.

Second, Jameson argued that the nature of the land promoted change in the people. He claimed that the
geography of New England made for revolutionary thought among small-holders and freemen that was
not so evident among those in the tidewater South. But the colonists were "different sorts" to begin
with; the Pilgrims and Puritans of the North were outcasts before they came across the Atlantic. The
middle-staters of Pennsylvania—--the Quakers—--and especially Maryland—--Catholics, Huguenots,
and Presbyterians—--were already in search of a place where they could be different and be at least
quasi-independent. To lay the responsibility for the revolution on mountains and streams, thereby
ignoring the nature of the people before they arrived, is a bit much to swallow. Were the colonists
changed by the land, or were the human changes to the land merely a reflection of the ideas the
colonists had with them already, and of the institutional-cultural heritage of these people? At the very
least, it is a chicken-and-egg question, but to me it seems that the latter argument is the accurate one.

In this same vein, Jameson cites the end of primogeniture as a social-revolutionary aspect of the war.
To illustrate the inaccuracy of this interpretation, one need only mention that primogeniture was
abolished in Britain over time without a war at all. It seems that the trend away from primogeniture
was already afoot in the British world (of which the colonists were a part, and of which even in 1776
most wished to remain). War or no war, primogeniture would almost certainly have receded, as it did,
and has, in virtually all European countries.

In addition, Jameson claims that the frontier unleashed a revolution. His view is that the frontier itself
was in some way responsible for revolutionary attitudes and thoughts, as if the land itself changed the
way that the residents thought. For the sake of brevity, let me say only that Turner's frontier thesis is a
much more convincing picture of American history than is Jameson''s. In short, Turner argues that the
frontier throughout American history has attracted and promoted certain types of people and certain
types of behavior. Jameson implies that the frontier made revolutionaries, and that when the war was
over, they stopped being revolutionary. Turner makes the point from the opposite pole: the frontier, by
its very nature, provided an environment where people who would otherwise have been misfits and
malcontents could flourish and achieve a modicum of what would then certainly have been termed
"respectability." Jameson''s argument virtually anthropomorphizes the frontier, while Turner casts the
region in a more proper role: that of a passive agent.

Third, Jameson discusses business and industry. He discusses how the war caused the Agricultural
Revolution to be visited upon the Americas. In Europe, where land was at a premium, peasants had

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had to adopt new methods in order to survive their growing population. By contrast, in the Americas,
land was cheap and plentiful, so new methods were not required. Nonetheless, it seems safe to argue
that the methods adopted in the colonies would have been adopted eventually, war or no war, when the
population density made it sensible to do so.

Along similar lines, Jameson suggests that the war caused a revolutionary growth and change in war
and commercial industries: paper, salt, powder, cannons, and muskets all had to be manufactured to
fight the war. Of course, after 1918, when the industrial nature of warfare had become painfully
evident, and (perhaps not?) coincidentally when Jameson wrote, it is easy to see how he made this
conclusion. But it is also easy to see, even with the benefit of the same hindsight that Jameson could
have used, that the growth of industry and commerce would almost certainly have occurred anyway,
war or no war. Napoleonic France was not converted into an industrial power, despite nearly twenty-
five years of virtually non-stop warfare that was of a far greater magnitude than was the American
"Revolution." It is far more sensible to argue that the industry and commerce of the Americas would
have developed as a result of trade with Europe, with or without a war. Lastly, many participants
argued at the time that the colonies were economically weakened as a result of the war for a significant
period; how is it that Jameson concluded the exact opposite one hundred fifty years later?

Fourth, Jameson argued that thought and feeling changed. At first, this claim seems the most plausible.
It is not. (Perhaps it is the least implausible?) He suggested that the war was a precursor to the
European revolutionary fervor of the 1830s; this perhaps has some validity, but the fervor of the 1830s
was a more peasants-against-the-aristocracy sort of thing than it was a taxation-without-representation
sort of thing. Another difference was nationalism, a decidedly made-in-France phenomenon. Greeks,
for example, rose up against the Ottoman Turks in 1830 in order to establish a Greek state. This was
not the nature of the American war, for no foreign power of different ethnicity held sway in the
colonies; certainly no Germans rose up in Pennsylvania in order to establish a German-style state out
of the old British colony. Indeed, Germans tended toward loyalist sensibilities.

Jameson argued that the war had the effect of creating more colleges and of diffusing religious faith.
This certainly is a description of cultural contact with Europe more than it is a description of a result of
a war. These very things took place in Europe before and after the American war; sometimes these
phenomena were accompanied by violence and armed struggle, and sometimes not. The Americas
were already religiously diverse, and it probably comes as no surprise that my conclusion is that the
growth of colleges was accompanied by, and was a result of, a substantial growth in the population.
This rather leaves the war out of the picture; for wars seldom create things, but instead tend to destroy
or impede them.

In conclusion, it should be pointed out that Jameson makes no political arguments outside of suffrage.
(One generally thinks of dramatic political changes as being a result of a "revolution.") He discusses
political institutions not at all. He is only concerned with who had the vote. But even before the war,
the colonies had wider suffrage than the European countries from which the people and their forebears
came; how is this a revolutionary outcome? Were these people not fighting to preserve that which they
already had against the growing influence of the House of Commons, which threatened to take their
self-determination away?

Slavery was already receding in the colonies; it was evolving away—--in Vermont in 1777,
Pennsylvania in 1780, Rhode Island and Connecticut in 1784; if the revolution was the cause, why
then did abolition, albeit gradual, continue its march in New York in 1799 and New Jersey in 1804?
The American variety of slavery was already "less bad" than in many, if not most, other countries,
regardless of what twentieth-century movie and television productions might have you believe. Was
the country not already progressive?

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But let us continue, in order that others may be individually considered, before I paint a general
picture.

5 Carl Becker

Another writer of note who is labeled as a progressive historian is Carl Becker. He was a student of
Frederick Jackson Turner and submitted as his doctoral dissertation—--it was called a thesis at that
time—--a work entitled The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York. In it, Becker
writes that the political parties in what became the state of New York were embroiled in a tremendous
rivalry. The members of the "conservative" wing wanted only to go so far as to assert their rights as
Englishmen, while the radical element desired independence. Becker argues for a compromise
interpretation in his conclusion, stating that "although the conservatives were successful in securing a
government measurably centralized and measurably aristocratic, we know that there was considerable
pressure for a more democratic form" (Becker 1909, 276). In short, Becker describes the desire for a
significantly different form of government than that which England had, and had existed in the colony
prior to the insurrection. In the end, of course, the form was essentially the same; that is, a bicameral
legislature was placed in the stead of Parliament, the President (who likely could have been King
George I of America) was substituted for the King of England, and a judicial branch was established to
play the role of the British courts. It is significant to mention that the second provincial congress of
New York opposed independence from Great Britain at least as late as May 14, 1775 (Becker 1909,
252).

It is the extent of suffrage that gives a measure of truth to the progressive argument as symbolized by
Becker''s work. The growth of political groups in New York presaged the formation of formal parties
in the colonies as a whole, foreshadowed the further entrenchment of those same parties after the
Constitution was ratified, and paralleled the same developmental path in Great Britain. The same
congress mentioned above voted to extend the franchise to freeholders and freemen with holdings
equivalent to forty pounds (Becker 1909, 252). The Committee of Fifty-One was essentially dissolved
as the Mechanics and the Fifty-One merged in a new system that eliminated wards and substituted in
its place a system of election by citizens at large (Becker 1909, 166). This presaged a similar reform in
England after the war with Napoleon, the Reform Bill of 1832. One is tempted to wonder if that
reform in England was delayed by the war; certainly one could argue that the reform in New York was
prompted by the war, but one can also be left with a sense that the change was on the verge of taking
place anyway, war or no war. Nonetheless, Becker is consistent with other progressive historians when
he argues the case of extended suffrage as a result of the conflict with Great Britain.

Becker is also in step with his progressive counterparts when he argues his "road to revolution" thesis
from the point of view of merchants. He spends an entire chapter discussing in detail the relative
efficacy of the non-importation measures instituted by the colonies (the word "boycott" had of course
not yet been coined in the 1770s, and historians of the early 1900s were apparently disinclined to use
it). In short, he argues that the non-intercourse measures (a synonym for non-importation) were
essentially ineffective. To be sure, there were fluctuations, but the image of the non-importation
measures must be one of reducing the flow of goods, not one of shutting the flow off and turning it on
when the colonists'' grievances had been redressed (Becker 1909, 63, 68-69).

A few years later, Becker wrote still more in his story of revolution. He argued in 1915 that merchants
were, among other shortcomings, what would today be called "sunshine patriots." He suggested that
merchants were all for non-importation as long as they could sell their wares at inflated prices, but
after the supply was gone, they were back to trading and importing again (Becker 1915, 229). This
example perhaps best summarizes Becker''s view of the "rebels." To be sure, he mentions the roles of
radical ministers in New England, and of other "agitators," but the loudest note he sounds is, to me at
least, the cynical observation regarding the merchants. (I should mention that I do not find fault with
his view, but instead merely wish to note that it is cynical.)

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Becker is perhaps best known for the line: "The war was not about home rule, but about who would
rule at home." This theme springs up time and again in the writings of the progressive historians.
Sometimes the words are a little different, but the theme remains constant.

6. Charles Beard

Oddly enough, one of the most outspoken writers on this topic was Charles Beard. He has entered the
annals of American historiography as perhaps the quintessential economic-school historian. His
seminal work, An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, published in 1913,
argued that the forces of the revolution were in effect subverted by the forces of the established ruling
class of the pre-war period. He argued that the history of America, and that the Constitution itself, was
the result of Marxian-style class struggle. He further asserted that the Constitution was an economic
document designed by those with money and property to protect those with money and property. This
class-struggle view was applied by Beard to all of American history. He would undoubtedly stress the
labor-management strife of the 1930s and the oppression of Indians and blacks as well if he were
writing today of the history of the Great Depression. He would probably explain the western
movement as a result of oppressed factory workers leaving the factory in order to find opportunity in
the West (this comment is offered as evidence of Beard''s odd-man-out status within the "progressive
school").

Beard also stands alone among the progressive historians inasmuch as he wrote a consensus-style book
in collaboration with his wife. It was entitled The Beards'' Basic History of the United States and was
published in 1944. In it, he (is "they" perhaps better?) seconded many of Jameson''s notions of the end
of primogeniture, disestablishment of the Anglican church, and so on. Moreover, the breakup of large
Tory estates was discussed (Beard 1944, 119).

But it is the chapter on the Constitution that stands out. Spatial restraint forces me to be brief; suffice it
to say that the view of the Constitution offered by Beard was a much mellower view than the one
offered by him a bit more than thirty years earlier. He discussed the various features of the document
and extolled its virtues. In short, he seemed more tolerant of "men of property" (Beard 1944, 120-137).
Was it because two world wars had changed his world-view? Had he been cauterized by the barbarism
of twentieth-century global war? Or had he merely begun to be more tolerant, as so often happens as
people reach the ends of their lives? Probably all of these forces were in effect to one degree or
another. Beard himself is quoted by Richard Hofstadter as saying in 1934 that "[r]are indeed is the
savant who does not appear to be at war with himself in his own breast" and in 1940 that "Olympian
certitude has exploded" (Hofstadter, 285). In any event, whether for war-time propaganda reasons, or
for the reasons wrought by intellectual evolution, Charles Beard near the end of his life had softened
his once-adversarial stance.

My only important criticism of Beard is that economic interpretations of history that exclude all
others, of the kind that Beard wrote in his earliest years, are at best one-dimensional. At worst they are
narrow-minded, adversarial, sometimes even hate-filled, polemics.

7 Arthur Schlesinger Sr.

Taking a similar approach to Beard''s in his interpretation of history through economic eyes is Arthur
Schlesinger, Sr. (But in many places Schlesinger sounds much more like Turner and Jameson than he
sounds like Beard.) What is perhaps Schlesinger''s most important work on the subject of the
American Revolution first appeared in 1918, with a new edition in 1939. In the preface to the second
edition, Schlesinger submitted that the assertions of the first edition had been "generally accepted by
historians." And that seems exactly to be the case more than fifty years later.

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Schlesinger''s view was sectional: he saw "two revolutions," one in the North and one in the South
(Schlesinger, 6). He argued that the non-importation policies of the colonies were far from universally
successful. Nor were they universally accepted. Schlesinger''s view is that the non-importation zeal
tended to be greater in the small towns rather than in the "great trading towns." He notes, for example,
that the leading merchants had gained a fair amount of relief from Parliament by 1770, and that their
fever for non-importation, which they had happily supported in 1768, had rather more than subsided
by 1770. The problem remained whether they could cease their non-importation practices without the
consent of the general populace, which was largely composed of propertyless people of lesser means
who still burned for the elimination of taxes entirely (Schlesinger, 218). The crux of the view is that
this business of the "consent of the people" was not philosophical or even truly political: it was strictly
an economic consideration. Schlesinger puts it even more bluntly near the end of the book:

... the choice which every merchant had to make was not, and could not be, a mere mechanical one,
premised upon strict considerations of an informed class interest. Like other human beings, his mind
was affected or controlled by powerful influences of temperament, environment and tradition.
Furthermore, the degree to which his wealth was removable was an important factor in his decision,
for his business and the good will of his customers were not commodities to be packed up and carried
bodily into British lines. These facts caused many a merchant to follow the line of least resistance
when independence was promulgated (Schlesinger, 603; emphasis is mine).
It is the italicized sentence that gives the essence of Schlesinger''s book. The point that he makes is
that there was a great deal of Loyalist sympathy among the merchant class, despite the myth of united
and universal opposition to British tyranny that had come to exist by 1900. Nevertheless, these traders
were no traitors; but it was pragmatism, not sudden philosophical enlightenment, that caused them to
modify or mitigate their true attitudes. How many times have we heard it said? "You''ve got to go
along to get along." So must it have been for the colonial merchants. This realization goes a long way
to explain the on-again, off-again support for non-importation and later for independence that
Schlesinger describes in such detail in his book. And at the root of it lies the influence of the masses,
or at any rate the influence of what is nowadays called "public opinion."

8 "Odd Men Out": Fiske and Hart

There is, as far as I am concerned, a single reason for mentioning the works of these two writers in this
essay, and a single reason only: to demonstrate that American historiography in the Progressive Era
was hardly unified in its interpretation. Just as "diversity" is a buzzword on today''s college and
university campuses, so was genuine diversity a feature of American historiography. And, perhaps
fittingly enough, this same diversity symbolizes one of the themes that progressive historians stress
almost to a fault: that the views of the people during the war itself were far from universal. And so it
was with historians as they wrote their books during the Progressive era.

John Fiske wrote a two-volume treatment of the American Revolution in 1891. To be sure, this was at
the earliest stages of the Progressive movement in the United States, but it falls well within the
boundaries. In that context, one can evaluate the contents of Fiske''s book, and in one other also: I
encountered Fiske''s name in various places in Turner's writings.

Fiske writes much in the second volume of his history of "drums and trumpets." (Sadly, only the
second volume is in my collection.) But there are still inklings of his views as to the nature of the war.
He writes, for example, of the "absurd talk of John Adams," who proposed the annual election of
general officers by Congress, and that "if some great men should be sent home as a result, [then the
nation will not be ruined]" (Fiske, 31). Fiske sees this as a ludicrous notion to say the least, indicating
his great-man orientation. (As an aside, Fiske writes of Benedict Arnold''s death-bed remorse at "ever
having put on any other" uniform than that of the colonial forces, which story has found its way into
American mythology; I wonder to this day if this death-bed regret actually happened.) In a sentence,

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Fiske writes of armies and leaders, of imperial nations and colonies, and of congresses and
parliaments. He clearly does not write of rivers, mountains, and mass suffrage.

Albert Bushnell Hart wrote his story of the Formation of the Union in 1894. The publisher,
Longman''s, offered other works by professors of history, including one progressive professor who
would someday become famous the world over: Woodrow Wilson. At the time, Fiske was an assistant
professor of history at Harvard University.

Hart asserted that the Constitution was more than a compact, the term he assigned to the Articles of
Confederation. He defined a "compact" as little more than a treaty, calling it an agreement between
states that lost its force when one of the parties ceased to observe it. Instead, Hart held that the
Constitution was as Daniel Webster had defined it: "...the people''s Constitution, the people''s
government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. The people of the
United States have declared that this Constitution shall be supreme law" (Hart, 134).

Of geography, Hart writes not of mountains and alluvial plains, but of man-made boundaries and
political competition related to enlarging the entities of the competitors. Again, as in Fiske, whom Hart
recommends along with George Bancroft and Henry Adams, the view is of and from the top, not of the
common citizen.

Are these writers of interest other than for the reason already offered? The reader may allow me one
other reason besides the one already claimed. It is important to mention these writers as a corollary of
the question I posed at the outset—--and sought at first "to duck": exactly what is a "progressive
historian?" Again, spatial limitations require me to be brief: it is clear from examining the work of
Fiske and Hart that if a "progressive historian" is defined as a writer of history during the Progressive
Era, then the work one will encounter is diverse in its viewpoints and interpretations; if, however one
defines a progressive historian as a member of a school of thought, then the events of the times in
which they wrote take on a secondary value, supplanted by rivers, mountains, and the like. But then
one must remind oneself of the example of Charles Beard, if for no other reason than to sully and
sunder that grand generalization...

9 "Of These Men, How Shall I Speak?"

First, let me offer a few compare-and-contrast conclusions. Progressive historians have in common the
world-view that goes with the economic interpretation of history. They do not, however, always
conclude the same things (Jameson and Turner argued greater economic democracy, for example,
while Beard argued the Constitution as a document written by the wealthy to protect the wealthy). To
a great degree, progressive historians are interested in geography, especially insofar as geographical
factors are determinants in history. This interest varies, of course, from writer to writer, but Turner and
Jameson are the best examples of those who ascribe to water-and-dirt determinism. Moreover,
progressive historians, presuming that one defines the term as a historian who belongs to a school of
thought, are interested more in the common man than in the great leaders; they are more likely to
examine the writings of J. P. Martin than of George Washington. They are in fact the predecessors of
today''s social historians. This focus is consistent with a great-forces-over-great-men deterministic
view, inasmuch as "the will of the people" becomes a great force akin to rivers and towns. But the last
common factor is perhaps the most important: progressive historians are generally in agreement that
the war was a true revolution, and their meaning of the word transcends the mere throwing-off of
"British tyranny" that so enthralled writers like George Bancroft and Mercy Otis Warren. This last
factor brings me to the second part of my conclusions, which is to me rather more important than the
first part.

The argument that the war was a revolution is essentially universal among the progressives; that is, it
is universal among those who took "progressive" world-views as they wrote. But the flip-side of

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revolution is consensus. Turner, Becker, Jameson, et al. argue that the war was fought for, or at least
caused, greater democracy in the colonies. This may be true; that is, wars tend to cause the end of Old
Orders and ancient regimes, but that is hardly a singular thing to say about the American Revolution.
All of our wars have caused some sort or other of significant social change and reform.

But the argument that I wish to advance is this: in being "revolutionary," the colonists demonstrated a
sort of consensus thinking. If they wanted greater democracy, that was not really change so much as it
was an affirmation of the existing order. Those who gained votes and other social privileges were
saying, in effect, "The existing order is pretty good; it is so good in fact that I want a greater role in it.
I want a bigger piece of it." These were no sans culottes cutting off the heads of kings and aristocrats
as the Frenchmen did in their frenzied Terror. No; these were Englishmen who desired home rule, who
at first sought to preserve local autonomy and loyalty to the King, not to Parliament; and it was only
later that they slipped into the position of demanding sovereignty.

The second half of the rebuttal to the thesis that states that the war was a revolution because of the
change it wrought is this: since all of the wars the United States has fought have yielded dramatic
social and political change, then they must all be revolutionary. The World Wars, Korea and Vietnam,
the American Civil War: all were revolutions in this context. But then the term begins to lose its
meaning to a sort of rhetorical inflation, just as what were once bit players in Hollywood are now
listed as "stars," and what were once "stars" are now "superstars." (What''s next, novas and
supernovas?) To put it another way, if the wars were all revolutionary, then none of them were.

This brings me back to Turner's statement quoted at the beginning of this paper. What he said in 1920
could easily have been said a few years after the end of the Vietnam War. Or it could just as easily be
said today, with reference to the upheavals being caused by the Information Revolution. And what of
the events in eastern Europe and their consequences in the United States as the realization hits that the
Cold War appears to be over?

If everything is revolutionary, then nothing is.

10 The Bottom Line

What the colonists sought was control that they had already been accustomed to having. (It is that
argument that Jefferson Davis used to define the Confederacy''s position in the American Civil War in
his speeches after 1869; it is from his own words that I paraphrased the subtitle of this section.)
Parliament was not in the colonists'' "chain of command" in 1700, and for the House of Commons to
attempt to place itself there was seen as a loss to the colonists. It was change that they resisted, not
what they sought; they largely felt that they were resisting an invasion of their political birthright, not
that they were breaking bold new political ground. It would therefore be very easy to argue that the
war was fought as a reactionary response, not as a radical one. And, as the businessmen like to say,
"The bottom line is the bottom line."

The bottom line, in this case, is this: classwise, those who ruled in 1770 ruled in 1790; the Parliament,
a bicameral legislature, was replaced by the Congress, itself a bicameral legislature; the King was
replaced by a President, who could very easily have ruled for life, setting a tradition that the head-of-
state-for-life would be chosen without the benefit of heredity (hardly a big change there; it almost
sounds like the twentieth-century case of Idi Amin, who could hardly be called a revolutionary
character). There is more, of course: only propertied white males had the vote, both before and after
the war; the end of slavery was not exactly accelerated by the war, though there were a few (relatively
minor) gains for blacks; the economic system was not changed, nor was the class structure, except to
forbid a nobility that in any case did not truly exist in the colonies before the war.

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Perhaps Richard Hofstadter put it best in his statement regarding progressive historians in 1968:
"Since the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, it has been hard for most Americans, and especially those
who make our world policies, to recapture the memory of the early United States, Constitution and all,
as a revolutionary force" (Hofstadter, 284). There is certainly much validity to Hofstadter's view.
Perhaps we cold-warriors are ourselves cauterized to the sensitivity of the progressive historians.

Perhaps not.

11 Conclusions

It is when one examines the period in which the progressive historians wrote that the most sense is
made of their work. Historiography is nought if it is not a reflection of the times that spawned it. Just
as the Progressives were involved in a movement to improve the lot of the common man in a time of
technological change, so did the progressive historians see the fighters of the Revolution as fighters for
the lot of the common man. And in just the same way, as the new country was first forging its
nationalistic unity, did George Bancroft see the war as a virtuous, nationalistic struggle. And likewise
did Charles Beard, the erstwhile firebrand, see the Constitution in a different light in 1944, when
democratic governments were only just beginning to win the first round in a deadly fight for their
lives, than he did in 1913, the last year in which Civilization was spelled with a capital "C." Could
Beard have seen the war and its resulting constitution in any other light than the light in which the
horrors of World War I were viewed in the 1920s and 1930s, that economic "special interests" held all
the cards and manipulated the rest of us like so many puppets, making us fight and slaughter one
another on a whim designed to make them still more money?

Historical literature is a reflection of the contemporary events of its writers. When one strips away the
influence of the times that colored the views of the writers discussed in this essay, one must conclude
by looking at the results that the war was one for independence, not a true revolution.

Voltaire was right on target when he said that there are truths that are not for all men, nor for all times.

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References

 Beard, Charles A. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. New
York: Houghton Mifflin, 1913.
 Beard, Charles A. and Mary. Basic History of the United States. New York: Doubleday,
Doran, and Company, 1944.
 Becker, Carl. Beginnings of the American People. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1922.
 Becker, Carl. The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760-1776.
Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin, 1909.
 Billias, George Athan, ed. The American Revolution: How Revolutionary Was It? New York:
Holt Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., 1990. Originally published in 1965. Used for background
reading only.
 Fiske, John. The American Revolution, vol. II. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1891.
 Hart, Albert Bushnell. Formation of the Union, 1750-1829. New York: Longmans, Green, and
Company, 1894.
 Hofstadter, Richard. The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington. New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1968.
 Jameson, J. Franklin. The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement. Princeton
University: Princeton University Press, 1973. Originally published in 1926.
 Schlesinger, Arthur M. Sr. The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution. New York:
Facsimile Library, Inc., 1939. Originally published in 1918.
 Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston, 1962. Originally published in 1920.
 Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Significance of Sections in American History. New York:
Henry Holt and Company, 1932. Reprinted in 1950.

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